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Improve Your iPod with Rockbox
polar_bear` writes "The allure of the iPod is undeniable -- they're well-designed, sleek little music players that pack a lot of features into tiny packages. However, iPods fail to deliver when it comes to support for free codecs like Ogg Vorbis, and -- let's face it -- iTunes leaves a lot to be desired. If you'd like to enjoy the hardware goodness of the iPod with GPLed firmware, give Rockbox a try. Tim Lord explains how over on NewsForge.com." NewsForge is also a part of the OSTG network, and Tim Lord is "timothy", one of our own editors.
So, just so I'm straight on this - TFA seems to indicate that the only way to get files onto rockbox is drag and drop. How, exactly, is this better than auto-sync? I plug in my ipod, all my podcasts, videos automatically re-encoded by my eyetv, and any songs I've downloaded with cabos are all automatically added to the player. Yeah, it sucks that the directories aren't in human-readable formats on the ipod, but there are plenty of third party apps to pull songs off an ipod. I keep the installer for a windows and mac version stored on my ipod.
I have yet to find a player that gives me the functionality of itunes, either. I use smart playlists CONSTANTLY to generate groupings of songs I'm likely to want to hear. Again, all handled automatically and sync'ed every time I connect the ipod. Most players don't even have the library management I have come to enjoy from itunes. The closest I ever came when I was on windows was the MEXP plugin for winamp (http://www.mexp.dk/), but that's still a far cry from itunes.
I know a lot of people who don't own ipods and still use itunes to manage their music libraries. I guess if it doesn't run on your platform of choice, that means you can't use it - but it doesn't mean itunes sucks.
I'll ignore the three year old list of complaints about iTunes, dealing with such hot issues as Titanium PowerBook drive speeds. But for someone like me:
* who does not have five trillion CDs I need to convert at once;
* who does not care what format they are in as long as I can listen to and search the files;
* who doesn't worry about album art (I already have the CDs to see that! Who can honestly say they listened to CDs on their stereo whilst holding the CD case a few inches from their face, other than when on drugs?);
* who doesn't particularly care about how much money "the poor artist" gets (if they can come up, either individually or as the kind of collective people whining about royalties infer they are, with a system which is as easy and as affordable as iTunes, I WILL BE ALL OVER IT)
and who in general just needs something to play music on his computer, everything I read about "this sucks" and "this is better" and "use that" is quite irrelevant.
So I cannot order my music files by Album in the iTunes main display. Boo bloody hoo. As long as it sits in the background, plays the music and allows me to effortlessly import new files and CDs, I really am not concerned with what else is out there.
People don't like itunes because it's essentially a gateway to the itunes store.
So, because I've been using iTunes for years without ever buying anything from the iTunes music store means I'm somehow using it wrong?
This argument is really just beyond silly. If you don't want to use it to visit the music store... well don't. It's like complaining about some TV channel because you don't like one of their shows. If you want to use your non-"drm laden" tracks with iTunes, just drag and drop to import and you're golden. Or, you can use another player if you want, it's no skin off my nose, just don't use such a silly damn argument for your reasoning...
-30-
The thing is, Apple supplements their boring, typical hardware by releasing unique devices that are ahead of their competition.
Just look at the Mac Mini. When it was released, NO vendor had a desktop anything like it, and even today the Intel Mac Mini is competitively priced with Intel Core-based knockoffs. The difference is, the Mac Mini is ESTABLISHED thanks to Apple taking a risk, and the rest are scrabbling for marketshare.
The original Ipod was smaller than anything else, but offered the capacity of a hard drive player. It was ungodly expensive, but it became rooted because the industry took too damn long to respond to the threat.
The Nano is another recent product that still has no competition. I don't know how, but Apple managed to get a deal for flash devices twice the capacity of their competitors (32Gb, while the rest of the industry was on 8Gb). The result was the 4GB Nano, with room for Apple to upgrade the line to 8GB in the future (once the 32Gb chip becomes cheap).
The fact that the Nano 2GB was priced at only $10-30 more than most other 1GB players shows just how lazy and wussified the whole industry is outside of Apple. Apple set the standard for pricing of 1GB players with the release of the Shuffle, but then instead of the industry pushing prices down and capacity up, they coasted while charging $10-30 less than an equivilant Shuffle. Then, when the 2GB Nano was released for $10-30 more than a 1GB player (despite the fact that the Nano used TWO 8Gb chips), was still competitively small AND had a smashing screen, the rest of the industry looked painfully stupid.
THIS is why Apple owns the industry...because they're the first manufacturer since DIAMOND MULTIMEDIA's RIO PMP to really PUSH the industry.
I have purchased Creative Labs Muvo players in the past because I WANT drag & drop without having to use a media library, but with Rockbox now I can turn any Ipod into exactly the interface I want. Suddenly, I don't have to compromise on larger size and less capacity for about the same price just to get some key features I need...Rockbox makes that possible.
Full Disclosure: I bought my first apple product EVER last week, a Mac Mini. The OS is decent, but I could care less about the apps. I don't like Safari, so I have Firefox. I don't want to be forced to use a media library with Itunes, so I went through the trouble of installing XMMS. I bought the Mini because it was tiny, VERY quiet at nominal room temperature, competitively priced with other small Intel Core solutions. It also offered me the chance to try OS X, but fall back to Windows or Linux if I really hated the experience...that's something no other small Core box could offer.
If the industry continues to lag Apple concerning small flash players, I may purchase a Nano or equivilant sometime in the future.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
This is unbelievably ignorant. A wealth of codecs means that you have a wealth of choices. It means that the vast population of digital music listening people are likely to find their chosen format(s) is supported by this firmware.
For individuals, they most certainly can and do have multiple formats of music in their collection legally. I have some mp3's and a vast amount of ogg vorbis. The mp3's were free downloads. The ogg vorbis are all ripped from my own CD collection. I also have some WAV files, which are my own recordings. And I happen to like the fact that I actually have the choice to try some of the other codecs, particularly the lossless ones, such as FLAC.
Remember, choices are a good thing.